STORIES OF THE LEGION: CHOC, by H. De Vere Stacpoole

When France found herself faced with the problem of Algeria—that is to say, with the problem of infinite wastes of sand inhabited by a foe mobile and ungraspable as the desert wind—she formed the Legion. She called to the wastrels, the criminals, the despairing, and the impoverished—and they came. Men of genius, street sweepers, artists, doctors, engineers—it would be difficult to touch a profession, a race or a grade of intellect not to be found in the Legion. All the genius that Civilization has turned away from her doors is here at command—for a cent a day.

CHAPTER I

The first rays of the morning sun were stealing up the palm-bor­dered roads toward Sidi-bel-Abbés, above whose ramparts the minaret of the great mosque blazed white in the sky. Eighty miles from Oran on the coast, set away in the vague, yellow, illimitable wastes of the desert, the headquarters of the Foreign Legion, Sidi-bel-Abbés is surely one of the strangest cities on earth.

It was built by the Foreign Legion; it is swept and garnished by the For­eign Legion; it is held against the Arabs by the Foreign Legion. At night the electric lights round the band stand of the Foreign Legion on the Place Sadi Carnot blaze against the Algerian stars, while the muezzins on the bal­conies of the minarets keep watch over Islam, and their voices send north, south, east, and west the cry that was old in the time of Sindbad the Sailor!

All’ il Allah—God is great. But the marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbés is not the fact that here Edison and Strauss face Mahommed in the form of his priests, nor the flower gardens blooming on the face of the desert, nor the roads along which the Arabs stalk and the automobiles dash. The mar­vel of the Sidi-bel-Abbés lies in the Legion.

When France found herself faced with the problem of Algeria—that is to say, the problem of infinite wastes of sand inhabited by a foe mobile and ungraspable as the desert wind—she formed the Legion.

She called to the wastrels, the crim­inals, the despairing, and the impov­erished of every country and every city—and they came.

Men of genius, street sweepers, art­ists, doctors, engineers—it would be difficult to touch a profession, a race, or a grade of intellect not to be found in the Legion.

General de Négrier said that the Legion could do anything—from the building of a bridge, to the writing of an opera, to the painting of a picture— all the genius that civilization has turned away from its doors is here at command—for a halfpenny a day.

* * * *

The sun had touched the upper bor­der of the huge, blank eastern wall of the Legion’s barracks, and it was still a few minutes before reveille, when, in room No.6 of the tenth company, the garde chambre for the day slipped from his bed, stretched and yawned noiselessly, and glanced round him.

The room was like the ward of a hos­pital, and the likeness was made no less striking by the card above each of the twenty beds, a white card, setting out each man’s name and number.

Radoub’s number, as shown by the card on the bed he had just vacated, was 7083.

He was a small and wiry-looking in­dividual, with the face of a gamin; that is to say, the face of a child who is a jester, who may be a cutthroat, and who is certainly, and above all things, a Parisian.

Radoub had, in fact, been an apache by profession, and Monsieur Lepine had given him the choice between a penitentiary and the Legion. He chose the Legion, because, as he said, he liked the name better.

He was quite aware that life in the Legion was worse than life in a peni­tentiary, and he did not care a button about the social difference; he liked the name better, that was all. He was an artist.

He stood now, for a second, gazing at the others, nineteen men stretched in all the attitudes of slumber. Germans, French, an Englishman, an American, a Greek, and a Russian. Then, shuf­fling on some clothes, he left the room silently as the shadow of a moving cat.

In a moment he was back with a huge jug of steaming coffee, and, as he entered, shouting to the others to wake up, the reveille came from the barrack yard. The reveille of the French army that sounds every morning across France, to find its echo in Algeria:

Ra tat tat ta. Rat tat tat ta,

Rat tat tat ta ta ta ta

Ra tat tat ta. Rat tat tat ta,

Rat tat tat ta ta ta ta

In a moment the room was astir. Between the reveille and the muster in the barrack yard there was only half an hour, yet in that half hour the coffee was drunk, the men dressed, the beds made, and the floor swept, Radoub yell­ing to the others to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, as it was his duty to put the completing touch to the dusting and cleaning and fetch the water.

Then he came tearing down the stairs after the rest and out in the barrack yard, half cut in two by the blaze of the six-o’clock sun, and under a sky blue as a cornflower, the long, long lines of white-clad men fell in, while the echoes roused to the bugles.

Then, led by the bugles, the columns wheeled out of the barrack gates, mak­ing for the great drill ground, where the arms were piled and the men, in square formation now, were exercised at the double.

It was terrific; with the sun blaze now in their faces, with the sun beat­ing now on their backs, and, now, with their sides to a furnace door, round and round and round the great parade ground they went, the dust rising and hanging about them in a haze.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and then the thunder and movement ceased and the Legionnaires, released for a moment after their first exercise of the day, broke into groups, cigarettes were lit, and the dust-hazed air filled with the fumes of caporal.

Radoub, though sweating, showed little signs of stress; he had lungs of leather. Not so Casmir, a man in his company to whom he was talking.

Casmir was a bitter-looking indi­vidual who had once been a govern­ment clerk. His white uniform was clinging to him with perspiration, and he was just getting his wind back.

The two men were walking up and down rapidly, for it is impossible to stand still after half an hour of the double.

“Well,” said Casmir, “this finishes me. This is the last time. I’m off.” He had been threatening for the last week or so to make a bolt.

Radoub, a fountain of wisdom in most things practical, had always dis­suaded him from this fatal course. The man who tries to escape from the grip of the Legion is, in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, brought back, and, when he is brought back, Heaven help him.

“Take my advice,” said Radoub, “and leave that alone. No good. Stick to it as I have done, and make the best of it. I have been at it four years and ten months to-morrow, and in another two months I walk out like a gentle­man.”

“Well,” said Casmir, “I have been in it only six months, and in another twelve hours—well, you will see.”

“Have your way,” said Radoub; “you are a fool. Do you think a clever man like myself would not have cut and run years ago had there been a decent chance? I weighed it all ages ago. The chance is too small and the punishment too big. It’s impossible to drill sense into a head like yours, else I’d say, ‘Look at me. If running away is not good enough for me, it’s not good enough for you.’”

“All the same, I’m going to do it,” said Casmir.

“Then do it and be damned.”

The bugle was sounding “Fall in,” and the morning exercises went on. At eleven o’clock, sweating, dusty, fagged out, but cheerful, the vast regiment of Légionnaires, wheeling in column formation to the sound of drums as well as bugles, marched back to bar­racks.

As they passed through the gates, Radoub flung a word to a small and dusty figure that was hanging about by the gate. It was Choc.

He had picked up Choc one night, a year ago, in the town. A dog that seemed compounded of all the known breeds of dogs—with the exception of the noblest.

Choc was dust-colored, his hair stood in permanent bristle upon his shoul­ders, and he was terrific in battle; he had fought everything in Sidi-bel-Abbés and in the village that lies by the parade ground of the For­eign Legion, and, without any manner of doubt, his family tree, had it been worked back, would have disclosed an Irish terrier somewhere hi the not re­mote distance. But the fighting quali­ties of Choc made less appeal to Radoub than the fact that he was an out-and-out blackguard, an expert thief, an apache.

I have said that Choc was hanging about the gate. That was the impres­sion he gave one. It was not the hon­est waiting of a dog for its master; it was the waiting of a confederate for his mate at a public-house door or the corner of a race course. There was no tail-wagging. As the column passed in, the dust-colored one sniffing about did not even cast an eye at Radoub. Then, when the last files had passed the gateway, he slunk in after them and hung about in the courtyard till Radoub, who was a friend of the cook, came out of the cookhouse with a bone for him.

This happened every day. Choc, who slept in some hole or corner of the town best known to himself, paid two daily visits to the barracks, at eleven and six.

At eleven o’clock he got a bone or, by chance, a bit of meat; at six o’clock he appeared to accompany his master into the town.

At six o’clock every day the work of the Legion is over, and you may see the Légionnaires, spick and span, streaming through the barrack gates to the town, there to amuse themselves as best they can. They have no money. Literally no money. The halfpenny a day paid them by government scarcely serves for tobacco; they have to buy their own soap, mostly, and washing is a big item in a regiment where white uniforms of washable material are worn, and must be worn speckless.

Radoub had taught Choc a lot of tricks. In the Place Sadi Carnot of an evening, with the band playing a march, you might have seen Choc, on his hind legs, marching up and down before his master. Visitors to Sidi-bel-Abbés, attracted by the animal’s queer appearance and his tricks, would question Radoub about him, and the re­sult was nearly always profitable to Radoub. It was said that Choc stole cigarettes for him in the native quar­ter of the town, sneaking packets from the Moslem traders’ stalls while Ra­doub held the latter in light conversa­tion, and not only cigarettes, but articles more bulky and more valuable.

To-day, Radoub, having given Choc his bone and dismissed him, was turn­ing to enter the barracks, when he ran into the arms of Corporal Klein.

“Ah, there’s that dog of yours again,” said Klein. “I was looking for you to tell you. The colonel says he has had enough of him, and he’s to be shot.”

Radoub swore the great oath of the Legion—which is unprintable.

“Shot—and what for?”

“Biting the sentry. It was last night, after you had come back from the town. Seguer was on duty, and the beast stuck about the gate, and Seguer tried to make him go, and got bitten in the foot, right through his boot.”

“He must have kicked him,” said Radoub.

“Who knows. Not only that, but the colonel says he has been having reports about you and him and your doings in the town; says that the Legion has enough blackguards in it without enlisting four-footed ones, and there you are; the order is promul­gated, the dog has to go.”

“Catch him, then,” said Radoub.

Klein, a big man, in spite of his name, came toward Choc, who was busy with his bone. Radoub whistled shrilly between his teeth, and the dog, picking up his treasure, started for the barrack gate. Flying pebbles and dust marked his path, and he was gone.

Klein laughed. He was a good-natured man, a friend of Radoub’s, and he had no grudge against the dog.

“All the same,” said he, “the dog has to go, you know what it is. The order has been given, and once the order has been given there is no staying it.”

Radoub knew quite well what it was. He knew the colonel and he knew the Legion. Choc might evade capture, but caught he would be sooner or later.

He said nothing, however. The bugle call for soup rang through the yard, and, as he was orderly of his room, he had to rush off to the kitchen, from where, in a moment, he returned, bear­ing a steaming can for his men; then he had to return for bread.

No one noticed the least change in him, and if there had been a change in him, nobody would have bothered. The Legion never bothers about anything, and the most monstrous happenings pass with scarcely a comment from the hearers and beholders.

* * * *

All that afternoon Radoub was en­gaged on scout-patrol maneuvers, and, at six o’clock, spick and span, he left the barrack yard for the town.

Choc was waiting for him at the gate, but not close to it. The sentry hav­ing his orders, had tried to lure him in, but Choc, alarmed by this unaccus­tomed civility, had removed himself a full hundred yards away, where he was sitting, with his stump of a tail stick­ing out straight behind him.

He followed Radoub.

But Radoub did not make direct for town. He skirted the ramparts till he came to the western side, where the great, rough, yellow wall was blazing in the light of the sinking sun; then getting into the ditch, he followed the wall a certain distance, stopped, glanced up and down the ditch to make sure that no one was observing him, and then drew a stone from the wall, disclosing a hole, in which was seated, like a squat gnome, a little, fat linen bag.

This was his cache. The money he had collected by one means or another during the last four years and ten months. It was a fair sum, partly in gold, partly in silver, and he had in­tended it for that day, now only two months distant, when, to use his own words, he would walk out of the Legion like a gentleman. He was going to use it for a different purpose now, and placing the bag in his pocket, without troubling to close the cache, he turned and, followed by the dog, came back along the ditch.

Stars like the points of needles were piercing the pansy-colored sky when Radoub and his companions reacged the Place Sadi Carnot. The Place was crowded; Légionnaires, visitors, and townsfolk crowding around the band stand, some seated, others standing about in groups. The warm air was filled with the scents of jasmine and garlic, the African earth, cigarette and cigar smoke, all vague and blended to form the sell of Sidi-bel-Abbés en fête.

Then the electric lights blazed, and the band struck up. They were play­ing the “Sambre et Meuse,” that splen­did march of the French army, spirited enough almost to raise the slain, but Radoub did not beat time with his foot, nor, when Choc glanced at him, did he gve the dog the signal to start his tricks.

He walked about for a while, show­ing himself to his companions, then he disappeared from the Place, and, fol­lowed by the dog, sought the native streets.

Sidi-bel-Abbés is slashed across by two great boulevards running north and south, and east and west. Here you find plate-glass windows and Paris jewelry, motor cars, cocottes, American women in blue veils. Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, and New York all represented by some fragment of their social life, just as in the Legion they are represented, each, by some of the universal diseases that prey on society.

Behind these gay boulevards you find the real Sidi-bel-Abbés.

You walk into the country of Islam. Passing through the narrow bazaars, the moon above your head becomes the moon that lit the three Calenders, and the lamps that light the gloom of the booths the lamps of Aladdin.

The Légionnaires swarm here, yet their blue-and-red dress uniform does not detract from the Oriental charm; they have about them some subtle touch of Africa that blends with the sur­roundings.

Radoub, followed by his companion, passed through several of the narrow streets till he reached an alley, where, at a door set in the wall, he knocked.

The door opened, and he went in, leaving Choc to wait for him outside, seated on the ground. Arab dogs came down the alley, saw the stranger, ad­vanced, burbling and bristling, recog­nized him, and passed on; the rising moon laid a pale finger on the wall top, and from far away across the faint noises of the city came the cry of the priest from the balcony of the minaret calling the faithful to prayer; and now a window opened somewhere, and the laughter of a girl, the tinkle tankle of a guitar, and a snatch of song blew away on the night wind and then snapped off to the closing of the case­ment.

This was the Spanish quarter of the Moslem town, and perhaps the wicked­est, outside the jurisdiction of the Bureau Arabe, and visited only by the shadiest characters among the Euro­pean population of the place.

Twenty minutes passed, and then the door opened and a man came out. He was dressed in mufti, but the alteration did not deceive Choc. He knew his master at once, and, rising, followed him down the alley into the street.

Radoub had made up his mind to escape from the Legion. It was the maddest act of his life.

First of all, he was not an ordinary Légionnaire, but a criminal serving for rehabilitation. If he managed to es­cape, he would have to begin his life over again without papers. It would be impossible for him to find work in France; he must go to England or some other country where papers were not required Then, again, he had only to wait two short months and he would secure his rehabilitation and be able to leave the Legion and obtain work.

Though he had started in life as an apache, common sense had been talk­ing to him for the last two years or so, pointing out that a franc made by rob­bery is not worth two sous made by work. The rate of exchange is always against the criminal; so appalling is it that one may wonder at any man with an ounce of brains doing business on such ruinous terms. Radoub had rec­ognized this, and he had determined, on finding himself his own man again, to take to honest ways.

He was now ruining all the plans he had made for that future so nearly in his grasp. Throwing everything away —for a dog.

As a matter of fact, there was no struggle involved in the giving up of his plans. Cold plans for the future, dictated by common sense, did not stand for a moment before the warm desire to keep the dog and flout au­thority. Choc was his mate, and he was not going to lose him.

Passing a shop where viands were sold, he bought two sausages and put them in his pocket, then he walked on, striking toward the European quarter.

The band was still playing in the Place Sadi Carnot, and the faint sound of it came on the warm, perfumed wind.

To Radoub it seemed a month ago since he had left the Place, and it seemed extraordinary to hear the band at it still.

But he had little time to think of any­thing except his objective, and that was Oran, eighty miles away.

There is a railway between Sidi-bel-Abbes and Oran; that is to say, a trap for runaway Legionnaires. Radoub was not such a fool as to use the rail­way or even to walk along the embank­ments. Time was of no matter to him. The pursuit would be after him before he could reach Oran even by rail; he had to trust entirely to his disguise and to luck. He recognized that Choc would be his main difficulty; he could not disguise Choc.

He had lit a cigarette, and he passed along to the city gates without let or hindrance; a bourgeois taking an even­ing stroll with his dog excited no com­ment. At the gates it was the same, and, walking with a leisurely manner, with his hands in his pockets, he found the road to Oran and struck along it. It lay before him white in the moon­light, and, beyond the gardens of the town, on either side, stretched the sand wastes and rocks of the miserable desert that in daylight is yellow, parched, sun-bitten, and murderous in its desolation. A few stunted palms broke the sky line on the right, while on the left could be seen the lights of the railway and the furnace-lit smoke of a train just coming in from Oran. Radoub, noting these, looked up and down the road; to right, to left, not a soul was there to be seen. Then, call­ing to Choc, he struck into his stride.

Nearly five years of life in the Legion had rendered him almost im­pervious to weariness in marching. Four kilometers an hour is the regula­tion pace in full marching order and laden with rifle, ammunition, and equip­ment. Forty kilometers a day is the minimum on active service.

Five miles or so from Sidi-bel-Abbes, a mounted police patrol passed Radoub without halting and with scarcely a glance at him, but they were going toward the town, and would know noth­ing of his escape.

Then, thinking things over in his mind, he reflected that the fact of his escape would be still unknown even at the barracks, where it was just turning-in time. Legionnaires sometimes out-stopped their leave. The pursuit would not be on his heels till to-morrow morn­ing, when, definitely declared absent, his description would be circulated, right to Oran.

But this did not incline him to slacken his pace. He kept on steadily, till he had reached a point some ten miles from the town, then he took his seat by the wayside, took the sausages, which were wrapped up in a sheet of the Journal d’Oran, from his pocket, and divided one with Choc. Then, no­ticing a prickly pear bush growing near by, he cut some of the fruit and care­fully peeled it.

It was their first meal in the desert, and they had four, for it was not till the morning of the third day of his escape that Radoub entered Oran.

CHAPTER II

His adventures during that journey of eighty miles or less would fill a brilliant chapter of fiction. He was stopped and spoken to by a police patrol and escaped suspicion of being a deserter by assuming the role of a deaf mute. He joined a band of wandering Arabs, and, suspecting their good intentions, escaped from them. This little escape within an escape caused him more trouble than any other incident of the journey. Lastly, by means of a bribe of two francs, he managed to enter Oran in a cart loaded with esparto grass and drawn by two mules, thus avoiding the attentions of the gentle­man at the gate of the town.

There was a rat in the cart, as well, and the maddening fumes of it surged through Choc’s brain, but he did not lose his reason or his self-command, and held his place, crouching beside his master, though shivering in every muscle and thrilling in every nerve.

The driver managed to unload his passengers in a back yard, unobserved, and Radoub, with Choc at his heels, found himself in the streets of Oran with nothing but the sea between him­self and freedom.

He had little fear of detection in these bustling streets, where every imaginable sort of business seemed going forward to the clatter of every European tongue.

Tall, white-clad Arabs stalked along, and barelegged Arab women, with faces veiled; negro porters, with glistening skins and red fez caps; Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, Italians, Spahis back from Senegal, sailors up from the warships in the harbor, and English travelers just arrived, formed the crowd through which Radoub made his way, with Choc at his heels, and not the faintest notion in his head as to what course he was going to pursue.

The obvious course was the mail boat that runs between Oran and Marseilles, but there were difficulties in the way. The boats were sure to be watched for deserters. Mail boats railway trains were simply roads to arrest. He had known and heard of numerous cases of escaped men caught either at the Oran railway station or on board the General Chanzy, or one of the other boats of the Algerian line.

He had an idea in his head of board­ing some small trading vessel and either stowing himself away or making friends with the captain, and he was taking his way toward the harbor, with a view to this, when, at a street corner, he ran into the arms of Casmir. It was Casmir who recognized him, and not he Casmir. For Casmir had dyed his face with walnut juice, and, the suit of gray jean that he wore being too large for him, he had stuffed himself out at the waist with old newspapers, giving himself a corporation that was the very best disguise in the world. He looked like a disreputable old Spaniard.

“Mon Dieu!” said Radoub. “Cas­mir!”

Then he burst into a laugh. Only such a short time ago he had been warn­ing Casmir, on the parade ground of the Legion, against running away!,

They walked along the. street to-gether, and Casmir explained matters.

He had run away, it seemed, on the same night that Radoub had made his evasion, had boldly taken the train for Oran, and, with the good luck that comes with daring, had found the mat­ter perfectly easy.

“I was never stopped or questioned once,” said he. “But here it is differ­ent. I cannot get across. It seems that they are watching the boats. I went down to the steamboat quay yesterday, and there was an official at the gang­way of the boat for Marseilles, He was demanding the papers of all the passengers—the men. To leave this place one must be either a fish or a sea bird, it seems, and I am neither.”

“Come into this cafe, and let us talk,” said Radoub.

They entered a shabby cafe that was close by, and Radoub called for coffee and food for them both.

“How much money have you?” said he.

“A hundred francs,” replied Casmir. “I had a hundred and forty to start with. I had received a money order from a relation for two hundred francs the morning I was talking to you. It cost me sixty francs to get this rig. It was that money order that fixed me in my idea of bolting, and I am beginning to wish now that I had never received it.”

“Courage,” said Radoub.

He said nothing for a few minutes, and then he began to disclose his plan. There were ships always leaving Oran for the French and Spanish ports. Ship captains of the lesser mercantile marine were venal folk; for eighty francs, say, the pair of them might be able to get a passage on some bark; a place in the hold, on top of the cargo, would do.

“Ah,” said Casmir, brightening up, “now you are talking! If any man can do the trick, you can; you have the gift of the gab and a way with you that I have not.”

“Well, then,” said Radoub, “let’s go down to the wharves now, right away, and try and fix up the business.”

But Casmir demurred.

“There is no use in our going about the streets together,” said he, “for, if one is caught, the other will be nabbed, too. I’ll meet you here in an hour if you will go and try and do the business. The cafe won’t run away, and you may be very sure that I won’t, either.”

Radoub saw at once the reason in this, and off he started, leaving Choc with Casmir.

Choc was fond of Casmir, who had often fed him with scraps; all the same, Radoub borrowed a piece of string from the dingy waiter and tied the end of it round the dog’s neck.

“That will give you something to hold him by,” said he, “in case he’s up to any of his tricks.”

Then he paid the bill and started off, leaving Casmir seated and holding the dog by the string.

* * * *

There are two harbors at Oran. An outer anchorage, not very good in rough weather, unless the wind is off the land, and a small, inner harbor, a little hole of a place, always full because of its small size.

Radoub came along the quay side, walking in a leisurely manner and smoking a cigarette. Beside the war­ships in the harbor there were two small, bark-rigged vessels, one dis­charging grain, the other with closed hatches and evidently a full cargo.

Radoub was walking toward the gangplank of the latter, when a hand fell on his arm, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Sergeant Pel-letier, of the military police of Sidi-bel-Abbes.

“That’s all right,” said the sergeant, releasing Radoub’s arm and placing his hand on his shoulder in a fatherly way. “And you may be thankful your uni­form was returned. Whoever sold you this rig sent it back, left it at the bar­rack gates, done up in a parcel. Mon Dieu! Radoub, but I would never have thought it of you, to play a fool’s game like this! A smart Legionnaire like you, time nearly expired and all. What made you?”

Radoub laughed.

The game had gone against him, and there was no use in grumbling.

His mind was engaged less on the business of arrest than on the problem of what he should do about Casmir and Choc.

To regain possession of Choc, he would have to give Casmir away, and Choc being condemned to death, there was no use in regaining possession of him. So he did nothing.

He lit a cigarette, and, walking side by side with Pelletier, he went to the station, and twenty minutes later he was in the train returning to Sidi-bel-Abbes.

At the barracks, he was placed promptly under arrest, and he marched off to his cell with that terrible light-heartedness which is a legacy of the Legion, inherited from crime.

As no single item of his uniform was lost, he only received a month’s im­prisonment, and, at the end of the month, the Legion was marched off south, where the Arabs were kicking up a dust, and hard fighting helped him to work off the stiffness caused by imprisonment.

He seemed to have forgotten Casmir, who had not been recaptured, and the dog, which was never heard of again; yet, in the great battle that was fought that month near the Oasis of the Three Palms, an old Legionnaire—the same who told me this story—fighting beside Radoub, was amazed, even in the heat of battle, at the fury of the latter.

“He was working off the dog,” said the old fellow. “It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle: They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur; they are bayoneting the past, and what the past has done to them.”